For several years now, kitchens and bathrooms have been, by far, the most popular home remodeling projects. While these rooms can have a tremendous impact on the resale value of your home, it's also important to look at recent trends to understand where home improvement is headed. Homeowners and home improvements contractors alike are just now beginning to understand the importance of a good laundry room. For an average size household, you can spend quite a bit of time doing your laundry every week, but the real kicker is the dread you feel knowing how tedious the chore can be. A well-designed laundry room can make doing laundry a significantly easier task.

The Room Itself
Part of remodeling or adding a laundry room to your home is simply the comfort of any finished room. Most people aren't dressed very warmly when they're doing laundry. If your laundry room is carpeted you can do laundry barefoot without dealing with a cold, basement floor. Laundry rooms also tend to be uncomfortably steamy. A ventilation system will take care of that problem. You'll also be surprised how much difference a window with an outside view can make. During the spring and fall, you can also throw that window open and let in the refreshing outside air.

Laundry Tasks
Laundry rooms also make all the tasks involved with washing clothes easier:

Sorting: Put bins in your laundry room and you'll be able to easily sort your different loads of laundry. Consider adding extra bins for clothes that need mending, clothes that need dry cleaning and clothes you're ready to donate

Folding: Try to find room for a folding table. A flat, accessible space right next to your dryer will make folding your clothes a jiff.

Hanging: Today, an increasing number of clothes must drip-dry. Make sure you have a drain for the water to run into. Hanging clothes on plastic hangers is typically preferred as they don't rust or get tangled as easily.

Ironing: Also with today's specialized fabrics, an ironing board is becoming more and more of a necessity. A fold-up unit takes up almost no additional space so there's really no excuse not to have one.

Avoiding A Flood In An Upstairs Laundry Room

Prevent damage from washing machine overflows and supply hose leaks with a proper installation.

Q.   I’m moving my laundry room to the second floor. I’m worried about a potential overflow. What precautions should I take?

A. Washers and floods go hand in hand and can cause huge damage to the laundry room floor and the rooms below. Take these four steps to prevent a disaster if an overflow or leak occurs.

1. Install a recessed washer box (about $35 at home centers ) in the wall directly behind the washing machine. This recessed box provides connections with shutoff valves for the water supply hoses and a drain for the washer’s discharge hose. For easy access and servicing, mount the bottom of the box so it’s about level with the top of the washing machine’s control panel. Be sure to choose a box with the shutoff valves included.

2. Install a washer tray under your washing machine. Set the tray tight against the back wall framing and run the drywall down to it. Our tray’s drain does not connect directly to the house’s waste line. It’s an indirect line that dumps into a laundry tub, floor drain or even outside through the wall. If the machine leaks, the water will be caught in the tray and safely drained away. Washer trays are available at home centers for about $20.

3. Make sure the supply hoses are in good shape. Check older hoses for cracks and replace if necessary. If you’re buying new hoses, consider the no-burst ones; these rubber hoses are sheathed with braided stainless steel. Be sure to use new hose washers. Connect and hand-tighten the hoses to the supply valves and the washing machine inlet. Turn the water on and check for leaks. If necessary, tighten further either by hand or with pliers.

                                        3. Hoses / 4. Valve
                                       

4. Turn off the water to the supply hoses when the washing machine is not in use for additional peace of mind. This is easy to do with a single-lever shut off such as the one shown.